There's a NewScientist special feature out today on advances in Robot technology that covers the state of human-like robots and lists some of things holding researchers back from achieving practical humanoid robots. Summaries of three additional articles available only to subscribers are included. They cover advances in robot speech demonstrated by the Waseda Talker robot, advances in walking such as those described in our recent article on the Max Kurz walking algorithm, and NASA's humanoid Robonaut program.